There are great benefits to analytics in sports. Then it is taken into statistical masturbation which becomes nonsense.

What was wrong with it? I read it late last night, but the crux of the stat seems to be let's use all the data possible to figure out the 'little things' that players do to maximize scoring.

Statistical masturbation is that crap that baseball announcers use. 'When the Braves wear red jerseys on the second sunday game of the month, Freddy hits .789 when Heyward hits a double in front of him'.

This stat might end up being meaningless, but there are a bunch of advanced stats in baseball that were built upon other stats.

The example in particular is self-contradicting for one. It's trying to break down a very fluid event into such minute detail it's idiotic.

A Tim Duncan screen sets up a Tony Parker to drive, slightly decreasing EPV as he drives right at a defender (Zeller)-a quintessential Parker move-but then increasing EPV once the point guard enters the paint.

Why would the expected points go down as Parker starts to drive and then back up as he continues the same move. It even says that Parker does this a lot, and probably his whole point of driving at a player is to open up another player.

Then the expected points of the 3 pointer goes down because the defender, who is miles away, tries to uselessly close out?

You don't even need a metric to analyse this play. It's really simple: WTF is Dion Waiters doing? He moved to a position where he can't defend a Parker shot, he can't defend a Parker pass and the man he is marking is wide open.

The metric should be: EPV once Dion Waiters puts his head in his ass is 3